Sameinuðu þjóðirnar - viljum við annan Kofi?

Ég hef áður minnst á það í bloggum hér að mér finnist Sameinuðu Þjóðirnir frekar vanmáttug samtök, samtök sem eiga erfitt með að taka afstöðu og virðast gjarna horfa vanmáttug og aðgerðarlaus á.  Nýjasta dæmið um er Darfur.

En nú nýverið birtist grein á vef The Times, þar sem fjallað er um Sameinuðu Þjóðirnar og feril aðalritara þeirra, Kofi Annan, en hann er nú hillir undir að hann stígi niður og annar taki að sér leiðtogahlutverkið. 

Þessi grein fer nokkuð hörðum orðum um Annan og Sameinuðu Þjóðirnar og lýsir því vel hvað aðgerðarleysið getur þýtt, fyrir þá sem setja gjarna traust sitt á samtökin.

Þetta er ekki fögur lesning, en fróðleg.  Aftast í greininni er svo stuttur fróðleikur um uppbyggingu SÞ, laun starfsmanna og farið stuttlega yfir hugsanlega eftirmenn Kofi Annan.

En í greininni má lesa til dæmis þetta:

"Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them.

Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.

The charge sheet would include guarding its own interests over those it supposedly protects; endemic opacity and lack of accountability; obstructing investigations, promoting the inept and marginalising the dedicated. Such accusations can be made against many organisations. But the UN is different. It has a moral mission.

It was founded by the allies in 1945 to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights”. Its key documents – the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the genocide convention – are the most advanced formulation of human rights in history. And they have been flouted by UN member states for decades.

A more specific charge would be that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, the UN is guilty of war crimes. Broadly speaking, it has three principles: that a commander ordered atrocities to be carried out, that he failed to stop them, despite being able to, or failed to punish those responsible. The case rests on the second, that in Rwanda in 1994, in Srebrenica in 1995 and in Darfur since 2003, the UN knew war crimes were occurring or about to occur, but failed to stop them, despite having the means to do so."

"That in 1994, Annan and the DPKO refused the UN commander General Romeo Dallaire (below) permission to raid Hutu arms caches, despite his warning mass slaughter was planned, that they failed to inform the security council, and failed to clarify the extent of the genocide

Unamir, the UN mission to Rwanda, was deployed in October 1993 to implement the Arusha peace accords, with the aim of ending the civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis. The Hutu government continued to plan a mass slaughter of Tutsis. By January 1994, ethnic tension was at boiling point. The 2,500 Unamir troops were under-equipped. Dallaire lacked everything from intelligence-gathering capability to batteries for troops’ torches.

By January 1994, Dallaire had received detailed information about the planned mass murder from a source inside the Hutu militia known as “Jean-Pierre”. The general asked the DPKO for authorisation to raid the arms caches and offer sanctuary to Jean-Pierre and his family. On January 11, 1994, he cabled New York: “Since Unamir mandate, he [Jean-Pierre] has been ordered to register all Tutsis in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1,000 Tutsis.” He said he planned to raid the arms caches within the next 36 hours. He concluded: “Peux ce-que veux. Allons-y” – “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let’s go.”

There was no will and no way. Annan’s office replied, in a cable signed by his deputy, Iqbal Riza: “We must handle this information with caution.” Dallaire warned of mass slaughter, but Annan counselled prudence. “No reconnaissance or other action, including response to request for protection, should be taken by Unamir until clear guidance is received from headquarters.” Dallaire was furious."

"Had Annan permitted Dallaire to carry out his raids, the genocide might never have taken place. Not only did Annan and Riza twice refuse this, they then sat on his fax. They neither alerted other UN departments nor brought Dallaire’s warnings to the attention of the security council. The council then downsized Unamir from 2,500 troops to around 250. Dallaire stayed on. He helped save thousands of lives but, tormented by memories of those who died, he later became depressed and attempted suicide. He retired in 2000 and is now a senator in the Canadian parliament, active on human-rights issues."

"That from July 6 to July 11, 1995, Unprofor, the UN mission in Bosnia, repeatedly failed to authorise air strikes to save the town, despite having the means to do so, and  was in grievous breach of its obligations to protect civilians

Srebrenica was one of six “safe areas” under security-council resolutions 819, 824 and 836, passed in 1993. UN commanders could call for Nato air strikes but only to defend themselves. UN officials were obsessed with preserving the UN’s neutrality, over and above its humanitarian obligations. Probably none more so than a Japanese diplomat called Yasushi Akashi.

Akashi was the political chief of Unprofor. On May 7, 1995, the Bosnian Serbs shelled Sarajevo, killing and injuring several people. General Sir Rupert Smith, the British commander of Unprofor in Bosnia, recommended Nato launch an air strike. Akashi withheld permission. He sent a cable to Annan arguing that air strikes might “weaken Milosevic [the Serbian president]”, who he believed was needed to help negotiate a peace settlement. By refusing to make a distinction between aggressor and victim, and by treating both as equal partners, the UN became a de facto ally of those carrying out the atrocities.

Conditions inside Srebrenica were appalling. More than 20,000 people, half-starved and diseased, were jammed into the town. Fleas, cockroaches and vermin flourished. The Bosnian Serbs refused soap and disinfectant for the inhabitants, and fuel and ammunition for UN peacekeepers. “There was no support from Unprofor headquarters in Sarajevo,” recalls Ron Rutten. “They did not care what was going on. From the moment we got there, in January 1995, we were sitting in a mess, surrounded by the Bosnian Serbs. All the major troop-contributing countries to Unprofor knew what was happening. There were SAS guys who were sending messages to General Smith in Sarajevo. I listened to their messages; they were reporting about everything.” But none of the information had any effect."

"Initially, the attack caused few ripples at the DPKO. Annan was away. The secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was travelling. Shashi Tharoor, the DPKO team leader on Yugoslavia, was on leave. So was General Sir Rupert Smith. On Saturday, July 8, Boutros-Ghali, Annan, Smith, and other senior UN officials met in Geneva. They barely discussed Srebrenica. Incredibly, they sent Smith back on leave. By the time Tharoor finally returned to his desk, Srebrenica had virtually fallen. It was left to Peter Galbraith, the then US ambassador to Croatia, to alert Washington. “In Akashi’s world, the reaction to something like this was that the UN had to be careful because it was dangerous and could lead to military action. The UN always needed proof and they had strategies to ensure there was no proof. They would sit on reports or ensure the information was not highlighted, and when it was reported to the press it just became more of the same from Bosnia.”

Once out of Serb-controlled territory, Dutchbat got roaring drunk and danced in a line. The men and boys of Srebrenica were also being lined up, but not to dance."

"That the UN, in particular the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), repeatedly ignored reports from humanitarian officials of atrocities because they were politically inconvenient, and that the UN still refuses to take action to stop the slaughter

The crisis in Darfur erupted in 2003 after rebels rose up to demand a greater share of resources. Khartoum’s response was ferocious, launching a systematic “scorched earth” campaign. Hundreds of villages have been burnt down, over 2m people displaced, and over 400,000 have been killed or died of disease or malnutrition. Rape is used as a weapon of war. The perpetrators are members of a militia named the Janjaweed: trained, armed and funded by the Sudanese government.

The UN has launched a large-scale humanitarian operation that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. But the powerful DPA helped ensure little pressure was exerted on Sudan over Darfur, for fear of jeopardising an accord that ended a separate, decades-old conflict between the government and rebels in the south. Over 10,000 peacekeepers have been deployed in Unmis, the UN mission to southern Sudan, to implement the accord, but there are still none in Darfur. “There was a fundamental feeling among very senior people that Darfur was a very inconvenient development and they would rather not know about it,” says Dr Mukesh Kapila, the former UN humanitarian chief in Sudan, seconded by the British government in March 2003."

"Despite Kapila’s warnings, Annan did not speak publicly about Darfur until December 2003, almost a year into the crisis. It was only after Kapila gave an interview to Radio 4’s Today programme in March 2004, describing the carnage, that his boss, the UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, briefed the security council. Before he left Sudan in April 2004, Kapila sent a lengthy memo to the DPA leadership, other senior UN officials and Annan’s chief of staff, Iqbal Riza. It detailed a “scorched-earth policy” of “organised pogroms” of “extreme violence”. He asked Riza to pass a copy to Annan. “Nobody could say I had not followed the proper track.

I had made repeated representations within the secretariat and to important countries on the security council. I had documented the human-rights violations and every time there was an incident I wrote to the Sudanese government.” Like Dallaire and Lt Rutten, Dr Kapila stood up for what he knew was right. “Because of my experience in Srebrenica and Rwanda, and because people in authority have a personal responsibility for taking action when dealing with extraordinary crimes against humanity, I had a duty to speak out.” He didn’t receive a reply."

"UN officials argue that the organisation is merely the sum of its member states and the secretariat are impartial civil servants waiting for instructions from the security council. If member states lack the political will or means to stop a conflict, there is nothing the UN can do. This argument has undoubted appeal, not least to the consciences of those responsible for the UN’s failures. If everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty. If everyone is responsible then nobody is responsible. But it is not adequate. However responsibility is divided between the secretariat, the security council and the general assembly, the UN functions as an institution itself. It has decades’ worth of experience of conflict zones, a powerful institutional memory, considerable moral authority – however battered by recent scandals – and, for many, symbolises the hope for a better world.

Most discussion about UN reform focuses on arcane theoretical questions. A concrete start would be to make the secretariat accountable. Annan has expressed regret over Rwanda. “I believed at that time I was doing my best. But I realised after the genocide there was more I could have and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support,” he said in 2004. But many questions about his term as DPKO chief remain unanswered. Why did he refuse General Dallaire permission to raid the Hutu arms caches? With whom did he discuss this decision? Why did he not pass Dallaire’s faxes warning of massacres to the security council? When did he first hear that the Serbs were massacring the men and boys of Srebrenica? And where was he when the Serb attack began in early July? Stephane Dujarric, Annan’s spokesman, referred all these inquiries to the UN’s reports on Rwanda and Srebrenica, which do not provide answers.

If there is any sense of shame about the UN’s failures, it is no hindrance to promotion. Annan brought several of his protégés with him to the 38th floor. Shashi Tharoor was made his director of communications and special projects. In 2001, Tharoor was promoted to run the UN’s communications department. India has nominated him for secretary-general and he has been lobbying hard for the top job, with Annan’s tacit support, according to the UN insiders’ website unforum.com. Iqbal Riza, Annan’s deputy in the DPKO, was promoted to Annan’s chief of cabinet, one of the most influential behind-the-scenes positions. Riza resigned in December 2004 in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal. He is now Annan’s special adviser on the Alliance of Civilizations."

"There are some signs of change. A UN report on peacekeeping, published in 2000, criticised the emphasis on impartiality. It noted that when one party to a UN operation repeatedly violated its terms, “continued equal treatment” of both sides “can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil”. In September 2005 the UN adopted a new principle, the “responsibility to protect”, as a basis for collective action against war crimes and genocide, possibly including military action. Accepting the principle was one thing, implementing it another."

"What can change after Annan? In recent months, Annan has strongly condemned both the continuing violence in Darfur and the UN’s inaction. The conundrum is that a new secretary-general could help reinforce the reputation of the organisation as a force for good, and return it to its humanitarian ideals.

But a secretary-general who took resolute moral stands on humanitarian issues would doubtless threaten the security council’s power brokers, and so is unlikely to be appointed. The council will continue to prefer an emollient, helpful secretariat over a confrontational one."

Greinina í heild má finna hér.